Identity politics and wrestling

[Johnny Sorrow]

Tammy did the feminist Hillary Clinton worshiper gimmick in Smokey Mountain, so it's been done.

[GOTNW]

Honestly I believe creating post-modern characters has played as much of a role in New Japan's recent rise as their match quality has. They've established clear premises, character backgrounds, relationships and haven't lost continuity. No way does Meltzer give Shibata/Tanahashi the full five in a vacuum. They are very good at exploiting the advantages of presenting wrestling in a more sportive setting. Different styles and morals are simple, effective reasons for feuds. I never feel like WWE's melodrama gives them an advantage, product-quality wise at least. 90% of "sports-entertaining" is completely redundant.

 

 

There are plenty of reasons for folks to fight that don't insult one's intelligence. Heat for the sake of heat is a very shallow notion. If the only way WWE can use female talent is as sex objects I'd rather they didn't even have a "divas" division.

[Indikator]

Tammy did the feminist Hillary Clinton worshiper gimmick in Smokey Mountain, so it's been done.

I actually asked her about that around 2009 and she had a "what the hell are you talking about" look on her face. So who knows

[Loss]

Her memory is fading. She specifically evoked Hillary Clinton in almost every promo. She even attended Wellesley so she could be just like her idol.

[funkdoc]

whoa, didn't even see that this was a thread now! i won't have time to read through all this & reply for a while, but thanks for doing this!

 

i suspect my comments about nerd culture probably ruffled some feathers, so i'll just say that i was referring to the overall culture on places like reddit + 4(20)chan + somethingawful. that's what i mean by core internet-nerd communities. having been around a fair amount of these people IRL as well as plenty online, i call 'em like i see 'em...

 

oh yeah, and just from looking at this last page...my idea for a feminist character wouldn't even be to make her an overt heel. after all, anita sarkeesian doesn't go on "Kill All Men" rants - she just makes videos applying basic Feminism 101 concepts to video game criticism with a level-headed tone, and draws death threats for it. i think the people who don't blatantly "heel themselves" are actually seen as a much greater threat by their enemies, so that's how i would do it in wrestling. the beauty of this IMO is that it could be a genuine "shades of grey" character that would draw different strong emotional reactions from different segments of the fanbase, and possibly even draw in new fans who wouldn't normally bother with wrestling.

 

i'm sure i'lll have tons more to say later once i actually read all of this!

[TRMD]

Some of these responses are a great example of why wrestling audiences are terrible today. If a guy is taking cheap shots at me with a loaded tennis racket and hiding behind his two weightlifting friends, then yes, he is a sissy. If two people who are xenophobic come out and insult me just for living in a country, then yes, they are heels. No one is going on about how the Swagger/Colter heel act were really faces just because they were standing up for what they believed in and rightly so. It was because they acted like instigating idiots. Were the Russians in JCP really just proud country men or were they antagonistic braggarts who also happened to be able to somewhat back up their claims of superiority?

 

My issue with the average audience is how meta they are. Chanting "this is awesome" takes me out the moment of watching what is supposedly an athletic contest and reminds me this is a show where these combatants are actually performing an intricate dance. The WWE writer is now the biggest heel in the business. People don't boo because their favorite was cheated out of a victory by the nasty heel, but because he's being buried, misused or whatever. Cesaro is an example. He's fun to watch and has a ton a ton of impressive spots. He's a heel though and wrestles like a face. Why should I boo this guy who's doing all of this awesome stuff? He's in the spot he's in because of this. Taking away the giant swing got people upset because he got a pop for it. Why should a heel be doing moves that outshine the babyface though? I'm not saying all heels should be grounded and do nothing, but chinlocks, but they certainly shouldn't be making the babyface look inferior. Meltzer had a great point on a podcast a little while ago about a Cesaro and Ryback match. It was awful because Cesaro tossed Ryback, the muscled-up babyface, around like he was nothing. I know certain people will say blame the agents or bookers, but considering they allegedly took away the swing because it was getting cheers, I'd imagine it's more on Cesaro calling the match as he's the vet of the two.

 

This is good shit.

[funkdoc]

alright so i read through this thread. the hip-hop discussion is way out of my league but i'm glad to see it pop up here!

 

anarchistxx, my thinking there was that this type of storyline could draw interest from women and others, which could outweigh the misogyny of the core fanbase and even help things in the long run by shining a light on these attitudes. i already mentioned sarkeesian as an example of this phenomenon, and you can also point to rebecca watson revealing similar problems in the atheist community. it would hurt a lot in the short term so i wouldn't expect anyone to try it except for some desperate shithole indie fed maybe.

 

regarding dylan's point on violence et al: what i think you're missing there is that leftist politics aren't inherently averse to violence. mainstream liberalism is, yes, but there are marxists and others who are perfectly okay with violence when it's the only effective way to attack established power structures. this is also why i don't entirely buy the line taken by parv & nintendologic - anger and the desire to win don't necessarily NEED to be tied to masculinity or retrograde ideas. hell, after episodes like gamergate, "social justice warriors" (this generation's "politically correct" btw) are as likely as anyone to show the kind of fire you wish ricky steamboat had!

 

to respond to parv a bit more, i just find "fuck bitches get money" beyond boring anymore. hell, it's hard for me to get into magnum-tully even - i think i briefly touched on this before when i said pro wrestling doesn't tell the stories that interest me. i tend to be most fascinated by those who have to fight mainstream conventions in some fashion, and/or get screwed by those conventions. standard pro-wrestling (and sports etc.) masculinity is the definition of a mainstream convention.

 

i have no illusions of this stuff happening with any promotion involving mcmahons or people tied to the old carny ways. i just think it's a necessary step in wrestling's transition from fake sport to art. and make no mistake, that transition is happening sooner or later (knowing wrestling, probably later). it's happening with video games as we speak, and i really do think that's the best comparison to wrestling for a number of reasons...after all, the NES and wrestlemania came within a year of one another!

[Johnny Sorrow]

alright so i read through this thread. the hip-hop discussion is way out of my league but i'm glad to see it pop up here!

 

anarchistxx, my thinking there was that this type of storyline could draw interest from women and others, which could outweigh the misogyny of the core fanbase and even help things in the long run by shining a light on these attitudes. i already mentioned sarkeesian as an example of this phenomenon, and you can also point to rebecca watson revealing similar problems in the atheist community. it would hurt a lot in the short term so i wouldn't expect anyone to try it except for some desperate shithole indie fed maybe.

 

regarding dylan's point on violence et al: what i think you're missing there is that leftist politics aren't inherently averse to violence. mainstream liberalism is, yes, but there are marxists and others who are perfectly okay with violence when it's the only effective way to attack established power structures. this is also why i don't entirely buy the line taken by parv & nintendologic - anger and the desire to win don't necessarily NEED to be tied to masculinity or retrograde ideas. hell, after episodes like gamergate, "social justice warriors" (this generation's "politically correct" btw) are as likely as anyone to show the kind of fire you wish ricky steamboat had!

 

to respond to parv a bit more, i just find "fuck bitches get money" beyond boring anymore. hell, it's hard for me to get into magnum-tully even - i think i briefly touched on this before when i said pro wrestling doesn't tell the stories that interest me. i tend to be most fascinated by those who have to fight mainstream conventions in some fashion, and/or get screwed by those conventions. standard pro-wrestling (and sports etc.) masculinity is the definition of a mainstream convention.

 

i have no illusions of this stuff happening with any promotion involving mcmahons or people tied to the old carny ways. i just think it's a necessary step in wrestling's transition from fake sport to art. and make no mistake, that transition is happening sooner or later (knowing wrestling, probably later). it's happening with video games as we speak, and i really do think that's the best comparison to wrestling for a number of reasons...after all, the NES and wrestlemania came within a year of one another!

This is the best promo a modern heel should use to get heat.

 

 

I keed, I keed.

[Shining Wiz]

Some of these responses are a great example of why wrestling audiences are terrible today. If a guy is taking cheap shots at me with a loaded tennis racket and hiding behind his two weightlifting friends, then yes, he is a sissy. If two people who are xenophobic come out and insult me just for living in a country, then yes, they are heels. No one is going on about how the Swagger/Colter heel act were really faces just because they were standing up for what they believed in and rightly so. It was because they acted like instigating idiots. Were the Russians in JCP really just proud country men or were they antagonistic braggarts who also happened to be able to somewhat back up their claims of superiority?

 

 

 

Well, you could find the 'sissy' to be the bad guy in that scenario, and the big guy who resorts to sexist based insults to be the good guy.

 

Conversely, I could find the cheap shot artist to initially be the bad guy, but more sympathetic when the guy he cheap shots resorts to distasteful and childish insults. That's the fun thing about shades of grey....it lets the crowd decide how they want to cheer/boo a situation, rather than telling them this is the good guy, this is the bad guy.

 

Just like as to me, as not being from the US, Rusev is quite often more sympthetic than those he goes up against. The Slaughter angle being just the latest and most glaring example. Often felt the same about the Russians. When it's two countries you're not a native of, it's quite often the 'home' country who comes off worse than the 'invading' country. Xenophobic is certainly a word that comes to mind, but not to be applied to the foreigners. It's why the foreigners are always bad.

 

As for Zeb/Swagger.....they were being cheered when saying the most racist stuff I've seen on wrestling in quite some time. They were getting cheers from the time they debuted against ADR.

[EvenStevenBooking]

Well, maybe Swagger/Zeb wasn't the best example, but live wrestling audiences aren't usually best barometer for intelligence.

 

And I still disagree on the sissy thing. A verbal insult/retort is a lot less worse than getting whacked with something that is apparently capable of rendering someone unconscious.

 

And Rusev is something I agree and disagree on. I still think they're heels due to constantly instigating audiences (and doing so before their "official" debut), but they have booked him oddly sympathetically at times. His feud with Swagger and his chronically injured ankle and that time Big Show and Henry double teamed him for no reason stand out.

[Shining Wiz]

Well, maybe Swagger/Zeb wasn't the best example, but live wrestling audiences aren't usually best barometer for intelligence.And I still disagree on the sissy thing. A verbal insult/retort is a lot less worse than getting whacked with something that is apparently capable of rendering someone unconscious.And Rusev is something I agree and disagree on. I still think they're heels due to constantly instigating audiences (and doing so before their "official" debut), but they have booked him oddly sympathetically at times. His feud with Swagger and his chronically injured ankle and that time Big Show and Henry double teamed him for no reason stand out.

Live wrestling audiences aren't the best barometer for intelligence, but they are the best barometer for how a wrestling act is perceived.

 

As for the retort, my issue is with the use of the word "sissy", not of any insult. It's not that far off from calling him a faggot or something similar.

 

As for the Russians, I agree they're heels by design, but just acting towards Russia as U.S. faces do towards the US makes them heels. When it's not your country, it stands out like a core thumb and often makes the dupposed faces seem like jerks.